Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
IMHO, simple ("claimed") copyright should belong to the author and nobody else. The copyright lasts as long as the author does ... the author dies, and the work becomes public domain. No complicated formulas that look at years - just a simple question, "Is the author dead or alive?" Easy way to determine basic copyright.
If the author wants their work to "stay in the family" after their death for future royalties or whatever, then there should be some method to "register" a copyright for a limited amount of time. The author can't just "claim" after-death copyright without formal action. If they want the copyright to outlast them, the formal action of registering it, specifically defining successor owners, is required. And there would be no posthumous registration of copyrights. The author has to initiate the action while they are still alive.
I would go even further, and say that all copyrights (whether claimed or registered) can only be owned by an individual. No corporations. And to further thwart "copyright selling/trading", no individual may hold more than 100 copyrights, except for the author. Once the author has registered 100 of their copyrights to an individual, they have to find a new individual for the next 100, and so on. This default limit of 100 could be overridden by the registration agency on a case-by-case basis. Their job being to verify that the copyright is going to an actual individual, not a person acting as a front man for a corporation.
|
That, of course, is not going to happen. There is too much money involved with regard to the Mouse and the small group of books that generate all the money.
The real issue is there is no constituency for rationalizing the copyright laws and plenty who like the laws just as they are. I would tend to argue that an author and his or her heirs should be able to retain copyright for a given time, but after the initial 7 year period, the copyright is only valid as long as the book is available for purchase, at least for books. Other types of work probably need different laws. With ebooks, there is no reason for a book not to be available for purchase.